


health inspection

by jesimiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Screenplay/Script Format, Statement Fic, i would like to know why he is the way he is, john amherst is an interesting character to me, mostly mold no bugs this time, uhh warnings for like. gross shit obviously. its about the corruption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23975239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesimiel/pseuds/jesimiel
Summary: UNKNOWNWell? Are you going to say your little bit before I start? You can get some, I don’t know, some Dettol or something, if you want. Some Clorox wipes, whatever. I won’t take it personally.[TheARCHIVISTglares for a moment before standing up and retrieving a can of aerosol disinfectant spray from a closet at the other end of the office. He stalks back, taking his seat, slamming the can on the desk and aiming the nozzle threateningly at the man in the brown suit, who raises his eyebrows.]UNKNOWNHm, yeah, you do seem like a clean freak. Fair enough, I suppose.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	health inspection

**Author's Note:**

> wasn't going to post this since i'm not exactly known for podcast shit on here, but my friend kieran bugged (ha ha) me to. find me on tumblr [here](https://primalreversion.tumblr.com) or [here.](https://jamherst.tumblr.com)

[ _SCENE: The main filing room in the basement archives of the Magnus Institute, London. Jonathan Sims, our **ARCHIVIST** , sits at his cluttered desk, organizing the last few papers atop it. His coworkers have all left for the night; he’s closing up._]

[ _A knock at the door. The **ARCHIVIST** whips his head around, startled.]_

__

__

**ARCHIVIST**  


Yes? Yes, who is it? Can I help you?

[ _A man’s voice answers him. It’s low and slightly raspy, as though its owner used to smoke, but hasn’t in many years. The accent isn’t placeable, but perhaps is faintly Irish._ ]

**UNKNOWN**  


I’m here to make a statement.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** relaxes; he was expecting his boss, **ELIAS.**_ ]

**ARCHIVIST**

Well, ah, I’m very sorry, but we’re closed for the day, if you could come back--

**UNKNOWN**

I’m sorry, I’m leaving the country tomorrow, very early. It has to be now--unless you do these things over the telephone?

[ _The Magnus Institute does not record statements over the phone. The **ARCHIVIST** looks at the wall clock--it is nine-thirty in the evening. He is very likely the only person remaining in the Institute, save for **ELIAS.**_ ]

**ARCHIVIST**

Alright. One moment, please, I need to get something.

**UNKNOWN**

Sure, yeah.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** drags another chair to the opposite side of his desk, and positions his tape recorder on the desk’s surface._]

**ARCHIVIST**

Alright, come in. The door is unlocked.

[ _The door swings open to reveal a very tall, very thin man in a too-large brown suit. He has brown hair and blue eyes, and is wearing a red tie. He is startlingly dirty--smudges of something dark beneath his eye and on his cheek, a large dark green stain on his collar, some sort of coarse dust coating the cuffs of his sleeves. He is fidgety-seeming, twitchy, picking at the dirty nails on the hand not holding the doorknob. He looks as though he should smell terrible, but he does not--he does not smell of anything at all. A fly buzzes at his shoulder. The **ARCHIVIST** knows him, somehow, but cannot place exactly where from._]

**UNKNOWN**

Hello. Should I, ah--

**ARCHIVIST**

Oh! Yes, you can sit here.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** indicates the seat on the other side of the desk, and the tall man sits down, crossing his arms nervously._]

**ARCHIVIST**

Are you alright with being recorded? If not, I’ll need you to--

**UNKNOWN**

It’s fine, you can tape me.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** nods and presses the ‘record’ button on the tape machine._]

**ARCHIVIST**

So, when did your experience take place? Just--just for organization purposes. For the recording.

**UNKNOWN**

Oh, I don’t know. Things tend to follow me wherever I go. I’ve always been a restless man.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** makes a strangled noise of recognition, cutting it off abruptly._]

**UNKNOWN**

Well, I see you recognized _that_ one. You’ve read about my work? A rare find, that--my little military escapade didn’t seem to make it into the final copy of Sir Treeves’ magnum opus, but Mister Leitner did manage to get his hands on that draft copy. Honestly, I’m not all that pressed about it. I’m not a fan of war. That sort of senseless violence isn’t really my style, yeah?

**ARCHIVIST**

You seem to have no problem with murder, from what I’ve read.

[ _The man in the brown suit leans forward, resting the elbows of his still-crossed arms on the desk. The **ARCHIVIST** leans away from him, half in wariness and half in revulsion._]

**UNKNOWN**

[ _quietly_ ] Do you think I put some sort of curse on that book, or something? Giving people killer paper cuts? I didn’t even know I made an _appearance_ in it until twenty years after it showed up on Leitner’s shelf and three years after his library got torn to shreds.

**ARCHIVIST**

I’m not talking about the _book._

**UNKNOWN**

I am not in the business of death, Archivist. I am in the business of fear. There is an overlap, but they are _not_ the same.

**ARCHIVIST**

[ _venomously_ ] Fine.

[ _A pause._ ]

**UNKNOWN**  


Well? Are you going to say your little bit before I start? You can get some, I don’t know, some Dettol or something, if you want. Some Clorox wipes, whatever. I won’t take it personally.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** glares for a moment before standing up and retrieving a can of aerosol disinfectant spray from a closet at the other end of the office. He stalks back, taking his seat, slamming the can on the desk and aiming the nozzle threateningly at the man in the brown suit, who raises his eyebrows._]

**UNKNOWN**  


Hm, yeah, you do seem like a clean freak. Fair enough, I suppose. Are you ready?

**ARCHIVIST**

I--Ah. Hm. Yes, I--yes. Statement of John Amherst, regarding--

**JOHN**

Himself.

**ARCHIVIST**

\--himself. Statement recorded directly from subject, XXth of XXXXXXX, 201X. You may begin.

**JOHN** [ _statement_ ]

Alright, well, to start, I wasn’t being quite truthful a moment ago. I do remember when things started--I just don’t really think about it so much anymore. It’s, ah, it’s been a _very_ long time.

I guess I could tell you a bit about myself? You’ll have to forgive me though, I’m a little out of practice. I’m not from England, not originally--I was born in Galway in 1864. Ireland hadn’t _quite_ recovered from the famine and my family wasn’t very well-off; of course, it didn’t help that it was large, too, I had more than a few siblings and cousins. The house I lived in was run down and far too small for nine people and I liked it very much. It was always comfortably dirty and damp-smelling and lived-in. I suppose it helped stave off the feeling of being alone, knowing I was in a place that held life. I hated feeling alone, even when I was very young.

When I turned nineteen, I moved to England, much to the displeasure of my parents, and caught a job at a railroad station somewhere between Liverpool and Manchester. I don’t remember what I actually did there. I wasn’t mates with anyone else there, either--we all sort of kept to ourselves, but none of them seemed to be terribly pleasant people to begin with, you know.

I do remember that I lived in a townhouse in a bigger industrial city--couldn’t tell you where, but the building was over on the east end, a square four-floored brick thing with a rickety staircase and a kitchen sink in my strangely well-furnished flat that looked like it hadn’t been scrubbed since before I was even born.

That was it, actually. The sink. I know I might not look it, but I liked to cook, if you can imagine it, and I used that thing more than my fair share over the five or so years I lived there. I don’t know when, exactly, I saw what was in the drain, but it honestly doesn’t matter. I would have noticed it eventually. Or it would have noticed me.

I didn’t think it was much originally. Having lived your whole life in a damp, warm house, you get used to the mold and the mushrooms and things. Nothing dangerous. Only thing was that it never actually seemed to go _away_. It’d disappear for a time, sure, if you washed it away with water or scrubbed at it with a cloth. But then it’d be back, bigger, in a new home--the door hinge, the chair cushion, the handle of my kitchen knife.

I don’t know why I never told my landlord. Perhaps it had a hold on me even then. The crawling rot was insufferable, cramming itself into every splinter in the floorboards and pocket of air in the wallpaper, filling my flat with its strange murky pattern and an odd sweet smell, like decaying fruit or a nest of furious honeybees, but I persisted. I cleaned obsessively. Spent all my time at work to avoid going home. Wasted countless gallons of water washing and re-washing my clothes and my hair. But I could never get rid of the mold.

And then, one day, I touched it.

Yes, a bad move, I know. In my defense, it was...compelling. I didn’t _want_ to touch it, I was fairly revolted at the thought, but I just--I _needed_ to. _Needed_ to know how the hypnotic pattern felt, to have it against my skin.

[ _distantly_ ] I was lonely, you know. So lonely. No friends, all my family back in Ireland--and they weren’t much. They never visited, hardly even wrote. The only thing that was always with me was that...mold. That rot. That _corruption_. And so I began, after a time, to love it. I found some bizarre sort of comfort in it. “At least _this_ finds its home with me,” I thought. So I stopped avoiding home. Stopped cleaning. Stopped frantically scrubbing its gray tendrils from my drains and floors and walls and bedsheets. And then I got too close. Tried to pick up something I’d dropped and it’d caught my eye as I bent down, my thoughts and hand straying, and my fingers brushed a rather large patch of gray adorning the floor like a tiny carpet.

It felt _wonderful_. It was soft and warm and yielded immediately, my touch jostling free a cloud of spores that crowded my lungs as I took a startled breath. I coughed and spluttered and fell to the floor, my head spinning, but as I took another breath, and then another, and yet another, I adjusted to the weight, the warmth, the presence in my chest. And the oddest bit was that...I sort of _liked_ it. I _liked_ them there.

I didn’t call a doctor. I doubt the one in town would have stepped foot in my flat at that point anyway--the rot crept over everything, reaching the ceiling in places. Health inspection of any sort in 1887 was almost zero and I’m grateful for that to this day. I don’t know what I would have done if someone had cleaned what I could not.

I didn’t eat or sleep too much. Stopped both altogether, after a while. I stopped showing up for work at the station, too. Nobody came calling.

After a time, I left. I don’t remember where I went, but I know that I stayed in England, and I know that I got sick. I forget with what--typhoid, maybe? It was certainly the trend. That woman in America, the one that worked the kitchens, she was like me. She reveled in disease in a way that I did not, yet, though I’d soon come around. But before that, I died, from whatever it was that I’d contracted.

Hm. Funny sentence. “I died.” But, of course, you know the rules. And I certainly came back--better than ever, you’d agree?

I’ve done a lot since then. Been a fair few places, besides South Africa. And that gray mold still lives inside my chest. It aches to spread, to consume, to infect. I’m not quite enough for it anymore. But I’m the one place I don’t think it’ll ever leave.

**ARCHIVIST**

State--uh. Statement ends.

[ _The **ARCHIVIST** clicks off the tape recorder, looking vaguely nauseous. **JOHN** is leaning back in the chair, looking at the **ARCHIVIST** intently, as though he is waiting on some sort of analysis. The **ARCHIVIST** collects himself._]

**ARCHIVIST**

I--um. I’m--I’m sorry?

**JOHN**

Don’t hurt yourself. That’s all I’ve got for you, anyhow. I’m not really interested in follow-up, or anything like that. It was a long time ago. I just wanted it off my shoulders, I guess. Sorry it's a bit short, but I'm kind of in a hurry. I’m, uh, getting ready for something. Thought I’d throw the Eye a bone before I did.

[ _ **JOHN** stands up from the desk, pushing in his chair unnecessarily. He cracks his knuckles very loudly and walks over to the door, opening it._]

**JOHN**

Be seeing you, Archivist. 

**ARCHIVIST**

[ _slightly shaky_ ] I sincerely hope not.

**JOHN**

That’s the spirit.

[ _ **JOHN** leaves, closing the door behind him. The **ARCHIVIST** pauses for a moment before heaving a large sigh, picking up the can of aerosol disinfectant, and beginning to spray it liberally upon the seat of the chair opposite the desk._]

**Author's Note:**

> formatting this fucking blew and i still couldnt get it how i wanted. this is why i do my shit on google docs. this is also the first time ive written using caps in about three years.
> 
> the "woman who worked the kitchens" that john refers to is [typhoid mary.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon)


End file.
